Tag: Anderson Silva

(Oh, this? Just the face of a man who knows he’s about to be chewed out by the Wheaties people. via Getty.)

By Scott Johnson

UFC 185 was a very interesting anomaly in the world of MMA, in which two incumbent champions were dethroned by the challengers who were considered underdogs going into the fight. Carla Esparza was only considered a slight favorite heading into her fight with Joanna Jedrzejczyk so the surprise there was minimal, but there weren’t many people expecting to see Rafael Dos Anjos topple Pretty Tony Pettis. Hell, most of us were already looking forward to Pettis vs. Nurmagomedov, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and now the UFC Lightweight division has a new champion in its mix.

In the spirit of these events, I’ve compiled what I consider to be the top five upsets in UFC championship history. I have no doubts that there will be a difference in opinion as to which fights belong here or which order they should be in, but in the words of the great Oskar Schindler, “Fuck you, it’s my list and I’ll put who I want on it.”

When I was a kid, my favorite video game was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. What I loved most about the game was progressing through the rogue’s gallery of fighters and finally becoming champion, because it was only after you became champion that you got to greatest aspect of Punch-Out: The “Dream Fight” with Iron Mike himself. It was the original superfight before the term superfight ever existed.

The recent announcement of the boxing “Super/Dream Fight” between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather finally happening (albeit 5 years too late) has once again gotten us MMA fans talking about what our equivalent could be, and on top of that, what actually makes a fight a “Super Fight” and not just a big fight, championship fight or other random main event.

As a bonafide Anderson Silva nuthugger (try not to picture that), I’ve been asking myself the same question for the past few weeks — “Why, Anderson, Why?” You were arguably the greatest mixed martial artist of our generation, maybe of all time. If Impossible was Nothing, nothing inside the cage was impossible. You, Anderson “The Spider” Silva, lived in some sort of netherworld between our world and The Matrix, where you made former champions look like amateurs and knocked out heavier men with a jab while backpedaling. Even on your worst night, you triangle-chocked victory from the loud-mouthed jaws of defeat. You were MMA’s first superhero, it’s first Superman.

If you didn’t happen to catch last night’s NSAC hearing because you don’t even work part-time for an MMA blog and have a life, then boy did you miss out (not really). Set to a soothing soundtrack of nearby construction work, the 3-hour meeting was as much of a non-factor as it possibly could have been. At one point, Pat Lundvall’s phone went off and it was the Benny Hill theme song. Seriously. It happened. Check out the “blooper reel” (a blooper reel!) above for another highlight.

And the NSAC themselves, my God (*kisses fingers*). In a meeting that was supposed to determine the fighting futures of Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz, the chairmen and women of the most frustratingly incompetent organization outside of a Comcast call center spent over an hour discussing the idea of placing a computer chip in MMA gloves in order to more accurately score fights. They spent another hour arguing about whether or not judges should be scoring fights with iPads, because penciling in a number between 8 and 10 is just getting too damn confusing. Did I mention the cosmic irony of the Benny Hill theme song?

But in the few moments when NSAC wasn’t struggling to take a piss without dribbling on their shoes, they did actually manage to reveal some information regarding Anderson Silva’s post-fight drug test. No spoilers, but it will breaka you heart.

Mixed martial arts has always felt like a kind of fighting utopia. A permanent dream state for lovers of fight sports that occasionally seems almost too good to be true. In a sanitised world, it is the closest and most acceptable iteration of the “no holds barred” concept of combat all fight purists have wet dreams about. Two elite combatants. One locked cage. Very few rules. The best fighter wins, right?

Oh wait, no. We’re back in the land of fantasy again. In fact, with the cold hindsight of UFC 183 and many other recent revelations that are presently clouding the MMA horizon, we’re no longer dreaming or fantasising. We’re standing in a stark reality. And the reality is that MMA – or more specifically, MMA’s standard-bearer and aggressively-insistent market leader, the UFC – is beginning to resemble a bit of a circus.

After a couple nights spent crying into a pillow and questioning everything I have come to know about this (occasionally) great sport, I’ve finally mustered up some courage to write about the whole Anderson Silva positive drug test.

MMA fans by now know that both Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz failed drugs tests leading up to/after their UFC 183 headlining act. On a fight card that promised so much leading up to the main event, the fight itself turned out to be more of a frustration between the two middleweights than anything to write home about.

But hey, no big deal right? Anderson Silva is back, Nick Diaz gave the people what they wanted and we all felt like we got our money’s worth.

If you hadn’t noticed by now, Nick Diaz is something of an anomaly. He says he hates fighting, yet it’s seemingly all he understands. He both fights too much and not enough to support his family…that he hopes to one day acquire. He is both a laid-back stoner and the drunk guy at the bar who will smack you for looking at him the wrong way. He has no belief, but he believes, he’s a walking contradiction (and he ain’t got no riiiiiiiiiight).

So it more or less falls in line with Diaz’s way of thinking that he would take a two-year break from the sport that has given him everything, complain about how little said sport has given him, rejoin the workforce, and be forced right back out of a job on account of his own willing incompetence. Does that make any sense? It shouldn’t.

The point is, Diaz pulled the equivalent of a hit-and-run on the UFC when he once again failed a post-fight drug test for marijuana. And today, NSAC test results confirm that he wasn’t even trying to hide it in the weeks prior to UFC 183.

In a surprise announcement yesterday, Dana White announced that he was leaving his post with the UFC and starting a new company, the Ultimate Roided Fucking Killers League, which will be the first fight promotion in history to make the usage of PEDs mandatory for every fighter.

“Literally everything good that has ever happened in this sport has been down to steroids,” said White. “URFKL is aiming to provide highly entertaining match-ups suitable for moronic casual fans.”